Jack Nightingale is a private investigator who left the Met under a cloud after a paedophile is thrown through the window of his office on the twentieth floor of his office in Canary Wharf. When he was with the Met, Nightingale was one of the Force’s best hostage negotiators, but now he spends most of his time following unfaithful spouses.
Nightingale’s life changes forever when visits a solicitor in a sleepy village who tells him that he is handling the estate of Nightingale’s father. This comes as something of a surprise to Nightingale as his parents died in a car crash when he was just eighteen.
The solicitor tells Nightingale that he was actually adopted at birth and that his genetic father, Ainsley Gosling, has left him a large house in the country but very little money. Nightingale goes to the house and finds it empty, stripped of everything of value. But on the mantelpiece he finds an envelope addressed to him, And inside the envelope is the key to a safety deposit box. In the safety deposit box he finds a single DVD.